HELP! Finder gone NUTS!

okay someone has got to help me! my finder started quitting and launching about 5-10 times per minute. i managed to restart but still nothing. and i wanted to try repairing permissions but i can't get to the utilities folder to open anything! I have the programs i my dock accessible but that's it! someone help!

First thing to try is doing a Safe Boot (hold down Shift while the Mac starts up - if you did it correctly, "Safe Boot" appears at the Mac OS X loading screen). If the Finder behaves normally in this mode, you can then attempt maintenance tasks.

Get your system disk and boot off of that. Repair permissions, repair the disk and be prepared to reinstall the system as a last resort.

Click to expand...

If you repair permissions off the CD, please RE-repair them from Disk Utility after you login. The BOM archives that permissions repair uses on the Installer DVD/CD are (potentially) woefully out of date.

I think reinstalling the OS is a last, last, last, last resort, plenty of other things to do first to troubleshoot.

Another step to try is to boot into Safe Mode and remove your com.apple.finder.plist

Boot into Single User Mode: restart holding down Cmd-S

At the prompt type:
fsck -fy
(press return, once it's done and IF it says the equivalent of 'file system ok')

Then type:
mv /Users/shortusername/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist /Users/shortusername/Desktop
(please note that is mv<space>/Users/shortusername/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist<space>/Users/shortusername/Desktop) (please note that "shortusername" needs to be replaced with your short user name)(press return)

If you repair permissions off the CD, please RE-repair them from Disk Utility after you login. The BOM archives that permissions repair uses on the Installer DVD/CD are (potentially) woefully out of date.

I think reinstalling the OS is a last, last, last, last resort, plenty of other things to do first to troubleshoot.

Another step to try is to boot into Safe Mode and remove your com.apple.finder.plist

Boot into Safe Mode: restart holding down Cmd-S

At the prompt type:
fsck -fy
(press return, once it's done and IF it says the equivalent of 'file system ok')

Then type:
mv /Users/shortusername/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist /Users/shortusername/Desktop
(please note that is mv<space>/Users/shortusername/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist<space>/Users/shortusername/Desktop) (please note that "shortusername" needs to be replaced with your short user name)(press return)

Then type:
reboot
(press return)

Login as normal.. is the Finder still freaking out?

Click to expand...

One minor niggle...you're confusing Single User Mode (what you describe) with a Safe Boot (as I described in an earlier post in this thread).

If you repair permissions off the CD, please RE-repair them from Disk Utility after you login. The BOM archives that permissions repair uses on the Installer DVD/CD are (potentially) woefully out of date.

I think reinstalling the OS is a last, last, last, last resort, plenty of other things to do first to troubleshoot.

Another step to try is to boot into Safe Mode and remove your com.apple.finder.plist

Boot into Single User Mode: restart holding down Cmd-S

At the prompt type:
fsck -fy
(press return, once it's done and IF it says the equivalent of 'file system ok')

Then type:
mv /Users/shortusername/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist /Users/shortusername/Desktop
(please note that is mv<space>/Users/shortusername/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist<space>/Users/shortusername/Desktop) (please note that "shortusername" needs to be replaced with your short user name)(press return)

thanks for the advice! I had thought about trashing the plist, but i first tried to mount the drive on another system on the network, get into the preferences and trash it from there. i restarted and bam, everything seems to work right so far thanks alot!

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